The Dayton Maples

9/14/17 Greenwood neighborhood (water-soluble colored pencil)

The traffic circle at 83^rd and Dayton in the Greenwood neighborhood is one of my favorite harbingers of fall. Three slender maples were planted by an arborist who must have chosen three varieties that would turn on staggered schedules. The one on the north side always begins to color first, and the one on the south side is the last to finish. I sketch these maples in the fall more often than any other trees, and they are the most fun to track over the course of a season.

I looked through my scanned images and found the one below from 2014 with the closest date – Sept. 17. Sketched from the opposite side of the traffic circle, the one on the left is the north tree. It had quite a bit more color that year than it does today. Stay tuned – I’ll sketch them again in another month or so. 

(Since I’m occupied with graphite for the next 10 weeks, I have a feeling I’m going to rely even more heavily than usual on maples to give me my much-needed color fixes this fall.)

9/17/14 watercolor and colored pencil